Good morning John,

I don’t know what people know about how I make videos but I usually write a script- and this video doesn’t have one of those: I started a document, it says “Good Morning John AHHH!”. That’s the whole thing, that’s what I got.

Basically, a lot is happening all at the same time; the entire YouTube community is coming together to raise money to plant trees in the world which is lovely; I just bought a bunch of land to build a warehouse on because DFTBA has grown too much which I don’t mind because, as I haven’t I don’t think even mentioned on this channel, DFTBA now gives all of its profit distributions that would normally go to me and John to charity; and also, yes, that has happened [Partners in Health Sierra Leone] and we’ve already raised more than half of our initial goal of $240,000 at pih.org/hankandjohn.

That’s a big truck- what’re you doin, where are you going, you just gonna- ok good.

And also it’s a just a lot to of finally had this thing that, John mostly you but also I, have been working on for a really long time and been thinking about for a really long time. This is something we’ve been really careful about and that if we’re gonna ask a lot of people for a lot of money and also gonna put a lot of our money on the line we wanna do it the right way and we wanna have the best impact that we can.

Now, of course, best is a trap that you can get stuck in right like is the best possible use of money. That’s how you start thinking about things, you will never do anything because what isn’t the best possible use of money, and I know this for a fact, is it sitting in my bank account. That’s what usually happens when people have money: you put it, you invest it in the stock market and then the idea is that in the future that money will be worth more money and it will be.

But as I get lots of advice on what to do with money because this is like there’s a whole industry of people who are advisors for people who have money, what I was realising when I say I just want to give the money away now is there was a lot of like well wait for the money to become worth more money and then give it away then- it’ll be more of a gift, you’ll give away more money. 

And that kinda made sense. Until I realised a really obvious thing- poverty and illness and hardship are taxes that pay for nothing. These things make it harder and less likely for people to find stability and contribute to their communities. Having your mother die is something that decreases your odds of finding stability for your whole life. My money doesn’t disappear when it arrives in Sierra Leone, that value grow in children, in nurses, in patients, in communities- it just grows in ways that are I can’t see or control the way I could if the money was in a bank account.

Financial advisors don’t love this line of reasoning cuz it doesn’t make them any money and there are like no highly paid charity donation advisors though that’s a little bit what John and I are trying to do for some people. Just shoot us an email at hankandjohn@gmail.com- we can help you make the most of your dollars.

Also, to raise money for this we’re gonna be going on more tours so if you wanna tell us where we should go there’s a link to a map in the description- you should click on where we should go. It should be fairly self-explanatory.

Also, at Complexly we’re doing a pilot season. We’re 2/3 of the way through right now. So we’ve got 3 shows that we’re making 3 episodes each of:

 History Pop which is like exploring history through the lens of pop culture. Got a Deadwood episode and a Chernobyl episode up so far.

And then we’ve got Stories Retold which is like an all ages animated channel where we retell fairy tales with like modern morals.

And then Hashed Out.And there’s links to all of these in the doobly-doo.We’re confronting the complexities of communicating in 2019 and it’s journalism and it’s Twitter and it’s bias and it’s leaks and all this stuff. 

So the staff is kinda like doing all these projects at the same time as all their normal things but I think it’s really cool and thanks to everyone at Complexly who’s working their butts off. 

And then Pizzamas is happening next week. I got a big pile of Pizzamas stuff right over there that you can’t see yet. If you don’t know about this, it’s this time of year where John and I go back to like 2007 Vlogbrothers and we make videos every day like we used to- ahh! I’ll be fine. 

John, because Pizzamas starts next week, I will see you on Monday.

Give to Partners in health or check out the pilots- here.